In Flanders Field

When I was a little boy, they still called it Armistice Day and marked it on the 11th day of the 11th month of each year.

Now, in the United States, it’s called Veterans Day. Now we remember not just the end of the Great War but the service of all veterans throughout our nation’s history.

I was touched this morning by a short email from a relative. It read “Thank you for your service.”

Well, I was proud to do it.

Perhaps being a veteran is what made me so interested in what the Brits were doing this year to mark the holiday they still call Armistice Day. In a massive undertaking at the Tower of London, they’ve placed 888,246 ceramic poppies -- one for each British fatality in the First World War.

Stunning is not a word I use often. But the result of this project is exactly that: stunning. A sea of blood appears to flow out of a window in the tower and fill the surrounding moat.

For those of you with three minutes to spare on this Veterans Day, here’s a link to a report by Mark Phillips of CBS News in London. (You’ll need to endure a brief commercial before the video starts, but it’s worth it.)

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-flood-of-poppies-in-london/

And here’s a drone’s eye view of the project that aired today on BBC TV.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30004315


In Flanders fields the poppies grow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

---John McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918)

Feeding the ducks

I was once chased by an angry black swan.

He got me, too, one sharp bite on my calf.

He was mean as a snake, and he would have gotten more of me if I hadn’t quickly jumped into my 1950 Volkswagen.

This all happened on the banks of the Kyll River near Bitburg, where I was stationed in the USAF in the late 1960s. There were flocks of swans -- most of them white, not black -- along the Kyll, which is more like what we’d call a creek here in Virginia – maybe 20 feet from bank to bank. I had noticed the swans many times as I explored the area, but this time a friend and I decided to take some leftover dinner rolls from the chow hall and feed the swans.

Maybe the black swan was having a bad day. In any event, nobody had told me that swans can be so, um, testy and territorial.

I thought about that angry black swan last week when I took some stale cornbread to Bryan Park to feed the ducks.

It was a pleasant fall day, and the ducks were cruising lazily back and forth in the lake. But when they saw me throw the first bit of cornbread, they quickly swarmed the area like a rugby scrum.

Feeding the ducks at Bryan Park took me back to my childhood. Our family doctor’s office was on Colonial Avenue near Byrd Park. Whenever my mother took me and my sister to the doctor’s office, we’d always bring along a bag of stale bread and feed the ducks in the park afterwards. Feeding the ducks was the reward for behaving ourselves.

Spending the afternoon at Bryan Park last week was a treat I had done nothing to deserve. It was a gift to myself, a bit of self-indulgence that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I presume the ducks enjoyed it, too.

There was a swan at the lake last week, too, a white one. He seemed pretty laid back. There were no irritable black swans. That was a real plus.

No sniggers, please

My hat is off to Bill McKelway.

His story in the morning paper was straightforward, journeyman journalism.

I’m not sure many reporters could have kept as straight a face as McKelway did in the telling of a bizarre tale that sounds like something out of the old Ripley’s Believe It or Not, which specialized in stories about two-headed  calves and the like.

Here’s McKelway’s story, in my words, not his. (The full account is available at http://tinyurl.com/k2woz9h.)

There was a fire just after noon at a crematory yesterday in Richmond. It happened when the crematory’s smokestack overheated and apparently set the roof on fire.

Why did the smokestack overheat?

Because the body being cremated at the time weighed 800 pounds.

The crematory manager said the body produced “excessive heat and oil” during the process.

(That only seems logical to me. There’s bound to be a lot of fat on an 800-pound cadaver. Cremating it was probably a lot like throwing a lit match into a puddle of gasoline. But McKelway didn’t go there, although the temptation must have been almost overwhelming.)

The crematory in question is not without experience in reducing large bodies to ashes. McKelway’s story quoted the manager as saying the facility is known across Virginia for handling “large people.”

But 800 pounds?! The mind boggles.

Firemen put the blaze out within minutes. Nobody was hurt, and damage was confined to the roof. McKelway quoted the manager: “There was no damage to the body that would not be normal.” (Imagine sitting at a keyboard in a busy newsroom and typing that sentence.)

The cremation was to continue yesterday afternoon after firemen had left the scene, the manager said.

McKelway told the story with nary a suggestion of a smirk or a giggle and without any hint of an innuendo or double entendre that might have seemed appropriate to a lesser scribe.

McKelway knows what all good journalists know: The facts speak for themselves, and sometimes all the reporter has to do is stay out of the way of the story.

McKelway did exactly that -- and readers were left to have their own reactions to this extraordinary tale as they savored their coffee this morning.

Oh, the humanity ...

And so I turned to the woman on my left halfway through fitness class yesterday morning and said: "I would never have believed I would be in aerobics class when I was 72 years old working out to the sound of a cover of Manfred Mann's 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy.'"

What’s next? A 32-count version of “Bohemian Rhapsody?”

The cost of wisdom

It didn’t used to be like this.

There really was “a Virginia Way.”

Now that a Virginia governor and his first lady have been convicted on numerous federal corruption charges, many of us are just a bit embarrassed by our naiveté, by our willingness to trust the people we elect.

   
This is the first time in the history of the commonwealth that a governor has been convicted of federal corruption charges. (Perhaps we should form a commission to study the appropriateness of a historical marker or statue or some such. We Virginians do have a penchant for memorializing historic firsts.)

The headline on the front page of this morning’s paper was one word, all caps: GUILTY. It was as big as the headlines when FDR died or when JFK was assassinated or when Nixon resigned.

The verdict was a punch in the gut for many Virginians. Our governors have included such American stalwarts and symbols of decency as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. And now it has come to this.

(I don’t believe for a minute that Virginia politicians have always been paragons. I’m not so gullible as to believe that every single governor we’ve ever had since Jamestown has been as honest as the day is long. They probably weren’t. But none were ever convicted of a felony before yesterday.)

Having a governor convicted of corruption in office is just so … Illinois.

The ethics laws governing Virginia politicians have never been strong. On the other hand, we never seemed to need stronger ethics laws.

Now we know we do.

Virginia politicians today are acting like a gaggle of hens who just discovered a fox in their midst. They’re squawking and flapping their wings madly as they discover – what a shock! – that their constituents want honest government.

But give them a couple of weeks and the feathers will no longer be flying. The pessimist in me thinks that the public fancy will have been attracted by some other shiny news bauble. What do you want to bet that little, if anything, will be done about ethics reform in Virginia?

(Let me hasten to say I hope I’m wrong.)

So here we are. After drifting along, trusting in the Virginia Way, we have been slapped in the face with a dose of reality: our former governor and his “nutbag” wife were reduced to revealing the tawdry side of their marriage as a defense against taking money and gifts that they shouldn’t have taken. Their defense didn’t work, and their reputations are now as tattered as a Confederate battle flag.

We’ll survive, and so will the McDonnells. The latter might even be vindicated on appeal. Who knows?

But the Virginia Way is no more. We can’t just blindly trust our elected leaders to be straight with us.

We’re much wiser on this day after the verdicts were announced in federal court.

But at what a terrible cost.

Who's next?

 

We had it all
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our old late, late show
Sailing away to Key Largo
-- Key Largo, Bertie Higgins, 1981

When one gets to my age, I suppose you have to expect to see obituaries for the entertainers you have enjoyed all of your life

But it sure seems like we’ve had more than our share this past month.

Now comes the obit for Lauren Bacall.

I’ll miss her presence on the planet. She brought me great joy.

Lauren Bacall died yesterday. She was born Betty Joan Perske on Sept. 16, 1924, and her friends still called her Betty. It was director Howard Hawks who gave her the name we all know her by.

If you don’t know about Lauren Bacall, you probably do know her most famous movie line. It’s from her first film, made when she was still a teenager, To Have and Have Not. She delivers the smoldering line on-screen to Humphrey Bogart: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

My god, sex just seemed to ooze from that room. She married Bogart shortly after the movie was released.

Thanks heaven we still have her movies. If you haven’t seen To Have and Have Not -- or The Big Sleep or Key Largo -- make it a point to get ahold of a copy of one or all of them. You’ll see what I mean. She was a silver screen phenomenon.

Last month, Elaine Stritch died. She was another of my favorites. She was 89 and, up until recently, she was still performing. I’ve enjoyed her acting work -- both dramatic and comedic -- since I first saw her in 1960, starring in the CBS TV sitcom My Sister Eileen.

More recently, I’ve come to love her as a singer. She could interpret a song with the best of them, and she could belt out a big Broadway tune as few others could.

If you don’t know her work, get your hands on a DVD of her one-woman show,  Elaine Stritch at Liberty. It’s a one-woman performance in which she truthfully sums up her life and career -- and sings some of her better known Broadway show-stoppers. The show premiered in New York in 2001, and then she took it on the road to London, where it played at the Old Vic Theatre.

(Two friends and I were in London while the show was at the Old Vic. My friends were younger than I was and had never heard of Elaine Stritch. They opted to see Chicago, and they regret it to this day.)

It’s hard when people you’ve admired since you were young start to die off. It’s like losing a part of your life -- the part that was filled with larger-than-life figures with amazing talent.

I wonder who will be next.

This is one of the drawbacks of getting old.

Don’t misunderstand: I’m happy to be alive and healthy at 71.

Nevertheless, I miss the great stars who gave me such a lifetime of joy.

And it seems as though they’re dropping like flies.

Panthers, Spiders and ... Meercats?

There’s an old joke that goes like this.

Question: How many old-line  Richmonders does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Four. One to fetch the stepladder, one to hold it steady, one to mix the drinks, and another to discuss the cultural and social history of the old light bulb.

It seems it never ends. Now it’s all about the cultural and social history of the Douglas S. Freeman High School mascot, Rebel Man.

How many will it take to discuss that? Way more than four, it seems.

But they’re not just discussing it. It’s turning into a controversy, with a news story even turning up in the Washington Post and two op-eds published side-by-side in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Shades of the Washington Redskins affair!

Speaking as a native Richmonder -- yes, some of us still survive -- I’d like this fairly trivial cultural problem to go away. Here’s an idea: Call ‘em The Douglas Freeman Meerkats.

There’s no direct connection between meerkats and the late Dr. Freeman (a revered Pulitzer Prize winning author and News Leader editor), although he would have, I suspect, admired some of their qualities.

Meerkats form families of about 50. They post sentries for protection. They work cooperatively. They’re industrious. And they’re cute. Just watch “Meerkat Manor” and you’ll see.

Meerkats are already in the news in Richmond this summer.  A handful of meerkat pups, all males, were born in June at the Metro Richmond Zoo. (See the zoo's live webcam here)

(Freeman students might be especially pleased to know that meerkat families are called “mobs.”)

So that’s my suggestion. If Freeman adopts the meerkat as a mascot, Richmond can move on to solve even bigger problems, like where to put a baseball stadium.

But keep in mind two things: My advice is worth exactly what you’re paying for it; and my high school mascot was a panther and my university mascot was a spider.

Surprise!

For years, the cactus sat on the my next door neighbor's sunny front porch. I never saw it bloom.

Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing any cactus in bloom.

My neighbor died a few years back, and her daughter gave me the cactus.

A year later I sold my house and moved. The cactus now sits in front of a big window here in my 9th-floor apartment. It gets full morning sun.

Two days ago, as I was watering the houseplants, I noticed two small bumps on the cactus, each about 1/4 inch long. By that night, the protrusions had nimbly grown to be about three inches long and looked like stalks. There was just the suggestion of something red at the tip of each stalk.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to find that the stalks had produced two delicate-pink flowers, as you see in the photograph above.

From two bumps to two beautiful flowers in 24 hours. I was impressed. It was really sort of joyful to see them throughout the day, reaching towards the sun, a delicate reminder of the cycle of life.

This morning, they were no more. The perfect flowers now drooped at the end of their stalks, closed and fading like breath on a mirror.

I had merely one day to appreciate their beauty. Then they were gone, presumably not to return for another year. It was a burst of glory for a few short hours, and then it was just a cactus again.

The story of the cactus flowers makes me feel wistful, makes me think about life cycles. It brings to mind traces of past brief joys. And it makes me wonder what the next will be.

Since I had no visitors yesterday, I was the only one to see the cactus flowers this year. Maybe next year I should spread the joy and have a cactus-flower party.

Memorial Day al fresco

I made the ice myself.

It's an old family recipe: put tapwater into the trays and put them in the freezer. Voila! A couple of hours later, there they are -- ice cubes.

(I will pause here for a moment while you delight in my kitchen skills.)

We also had cheeseburgers at our small Memorial Day picnic this year -- and deviled eggs, lemonade, french fries and chocolate cupcakes. Apart from the ice -- did I tell you I made that myself? -- I purchased every bit of our picnic, ready-made.

My niece Terry, her husband, James, and their two kids, Carlos and Milagros, joined me on the grounds outside my apartment building. We found a picnic table under a grove of trees next to a small playground. After we polished off the picnic we played catch with a rubber ball.

Milagros has a pink baseball glove. And for a 9-year-old, Carlos has a great arm.

While the kids played energetically, we adults had a chance to talk.

I like the idea of celebrating Memorial Day with family. And a picnic has a Norman Rockwell aspect to it that draws us together today as we remember those who died that we might be able to enjoy the freedom we have.

So, yeah. It was a good Memorial Day for me ... once I got past the complicated chore of making the ice.

Quotes familiar and unfamiliar

Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

As a journalist, I've read a few quotes about my profession that have stuck with me. Some are funny. Others have the power still to make me think.

Let's start with a quote about writing from Mark Twain, one of our most pithy, humorous and cantankerous authors and journalists. He was talking about a common -- and overused -- adverb that had become a language tic even in his day.

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

Now that's a blow for concision. And it's concisely expressed.

You've probably never heard of the person I'm going to quote next. James Nicoll is an Internet personality and blogger. He is perhaps most famous for what he wrote in 1990, in a Usenet group (rec.arts.sf-lovers), about the richness of our language.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."

(He later acknowledged that 'riffle' was a misspelling of 'rifle'.)

And here's one from somebody we all know. Often, merely a part of it is used. (I've underlined that part below). But the full quote, in context, is deeply thought-provoking. It's by Virginia's Thomas Jefferson.

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them."

Think about that. And then think about it again.

I'll leave you with a quote that every journalist knows. Efforts to trace its origins have not borne fruit. It has now assumed the status of a cliché among those who face deadlines.

"If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

Skepticism, in a reporter, is a good thing.

Nitpicking

I know I'm picking nits here.

(Do you know the origin of "picking nits?" If not, you'll find it interesting. Look it up.)

One of the local reporters on a TV newscast the other night said, "The mayor's problem centers around funding."

That's my nit number one. Things don't "center around." The center is a point. It doesn't move around. A problem might center on, or it might revolve around, but it just can't center around. The laws of physics are immutable.

So if the hapless reporter wanted to preserve the cliché, which is tired from overuse and should be put to bed, she should have said, "The mayor's problem revolves around money."

Or better still, "The mayor's problem is money."

I read a quote in the paper the other day that provided nit number two for me to pick. It's about the word "comprise." It's a simple word meaning to include or consist of. But so many people get it wrong. RIGHT: "The team comprises nine players."

I've almost given up on nit number three. It's about "begging the question."

To beg the question is to commit the error of using circular reasoning. It all goes back to Aristotelian Logic and petitio principii. Unless you're really good at arguing and you really understand the logic of arguments, it's probably best to leave this one alone. Many people have come to think that "to beg the question" means the same thing as "to raise the question." It doesn't.

My advice, for what it's worth, is just don't use it. If you do use it, some people will think you're wrong, whatever you say. Just say "raise the question." That's probably what you mean anyway.

I don't harbor a great urge to pick nits. When it comes to English, I lean in the direction of descriptivism more than prescriptivism. (For example, I believe my nit number three above is about to undergo a sea change.)

The language evolves. It is not frozen in an ice-cube.

Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales centuries ago in the English that existed then. "Whan that aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of march hath perced to the roote/And bathed every veyne in swich licour ..."

How many of us can translate that into today's idiom? Common speech has changed dramatically since the 14th century, so much so that if we were transported back to Chaucer's England, we'd not understand much of what the locals said.

Is Chaucer's English where the language should have stopped evolving? Is Shakespeare's? Is Faulkner's or Hemmingway's?

I think not. English will, despite any nits I or others might pick, will continue to grow and change.

The call of the siren

I was reminded the other day when I was driving on East Broad Street near St. John's Church of a story that my mother often told me over the years about my reaction to the sound of fire or police sirens when I was a toddler.

She said they scared me badly, and I would scream and cry.

She eventually decided to be (and she would never have used this word) proactive. She picked up the phone and called Fire Station No. 1 at 25th and Broad, the firehouse that served our neighborhood.

She told whoever answered the phone about her/my problem and asked for a big favor: "Can I bring my son to the firehouse and let him meet a fireman and see the fire trucks?"

They set a date for our visit, and when we showed up, the entire station turned out to make us feel welcome. We toured the firehouse -- including the pole down which the firemen would slide from their quarters on the second floor to their fire trucks below -- and the firemen explained everything in terms that a 3-year-old could understand.

Then comes the only part of the story that I remember myself: A fireman lifted me up, put me in the driver's seat of a beautifully polished red and gold fire engine, and he let me ring the bell.

My mom said that I was captivated by these firemen and their handsome firehouse.

And she always ended her telling of the story the same way: "And you never cried again when you heard a siren. Instead, you wanted to go visit the firehouse."

                                                 *       *       *

The firehouse at 25th and Broad is no more.

It was built in about 1870 at 306 North 25th Street and upgraded just after the turn of the century. The photo above shows the firehouse as it was at the time of my visit as a young child.

In 1962 the city built a replacement firehouse, the present one, at 308 North 24th Street, a block west of the old firehouse. The plot of land on which the old fire station stood is now a graceful public space, Patrick Henry Park.

I nailed down the historical facts (and acquired the image above) with the assistance of Christina Smith of Richmond Fire and Emergency Services and John Hinant, a former Fire Captain who retired after 38 years with the Richmond Fire Department.

I am grateful for their help.

Predictably, the language changes

It's the predictably in the headline above that makes my point.

Predictably is what grammarians call a sentence adverb, meaning that instead of modifying another adverb or an adjective or a verb, it modifies the whole sentence.

So why can't hopefully make the smooth transfer in status as a sentence adverb? So many other adverbs have made it. For example, sentences roll trippingly off the tongue even though they begin with actually, apparently, basically, clearly, confidentially, evidently, fortunately, and so on.

One critic, who otherwise -- hopefully -- accepts sentence adverbs such as seriously and ultimately, calls such use of hopefully "slack-jawed, common, sleazy."

Others have also tried to hold the line, which has crumbled under fire from almost all sides. Strunk and White said using hopefully as a sentence adverb offends the ears of those "who do not like to see words dulled or eroded."

But the world spins 'round and 'round.

My friend Walter, who is, like me, fascinated by our language, just today emailed me to say that he long ago gave up on hopefully the way it was once used.

Alas! Even the staid and august AP Stylebook has turned with the tide. The word mavens at the Associated Press said a decade ago (see my old copy of the AP Stylebook above) that it was wrong to write "Hopefully, we will complete our work in June."

Two years ago those AP experts tweeted: "We now support the modern usage of hopefully." The AP has gotten hip in more ways than one.

However -- and this is a big however -- if you are a careful writer, it's probably not wise just yet to go around sprinkling hopefully hither and thither at the beginning of your sentences. Among those who still caution against it is The New York Times. The Great Gray Lady will allow it, but notes primly that such use of hopefully is taking the chance of offending some of the paper's old-school readers.

But I think all is definitely lost in this particular battle. In another generation, no one will even remember that prissy time long ago when hopefully was frowned on as a sentence adverb.

Perhaps we can turn an eye ... dare I say hopefully? ... towards holding the line against another of my friend Walter's pet peeves: using a modifier with unique." Certainly, that's worth fighting for. Or has that battle been lost, too?

Hopefully not.

Commonality

I think Oscar Pistorius might affect us all more than we realize. His trial is introducing the English-speaking world to the South African accent in a major way.

The educated South African pronunciation we're hearing from the judges and lawyers and witnesses in the trial is definitely a precise version of our common tongue, but it occasionally employs emphasis, idiom and cultural custom that don't always fall easy on our American ears.

It's not British English, nor Australian English. Neither is it our own American English.

It's distinctly the English of South Africa.

This broadening of the American experience started with radio. With a flip of a switch (and as soon as the tubes warmed up) we could listen to people from New York and Los Angeles and Chicago, and even Milwaukee (whence comes H.V. Kaltenborn, an early CBS news analyst with a precise and imposing voice).

And so we all slowly and steadily began to talk more or less alike.

Television and film furthered the changes in the American accent. Satellites made us aware that English was spoken quite differently depending on where in the world one is.

Now the "trial of the century" in South Africa is adding a healthy dose of that nation's English to the mix -- adding to what we heard in the recent celebrations of the life of Nelson Mandela.

And it's not only the accents that enrich us. There is also the matter of the words we hear and then adopt.

(We'll pause here while you throw another shrimp on the barbie [Australia] or just do your own thing [Mandingo via Ralph Waldo Emerson].)

I am reminded of what James Nicoll said back when the global Internet was just becoming really useful in connecting us. Nicoll is well-known in the Usenet community and writes and blogs. He wrote:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

I'm not endorsing language-based violence verbal or physical, but I welcome the enrichment of our common speech. Our language is alive and well.

Lucky us

The snow was swirling yesterday afternoon outside my 9th-floor apartment. Inside, I was reading a charming book lent to me by my nephew's wife.

"Dick's Book: Reflections of a Farmer" is by Samuel Dick Harris, who is my nephew's wife's uncle, her mother's brother. He opens his book with stories about his life growing up on a farm in Spotsylvania County.

As the snow fell on a cold March afternoon in 2014, I came upon this passage describing a snowstorm that happened two years before I was born:

Anyone that lived in central Virginia in January of 1940 will never forget the snow that started on January 24th at around three or four o'clock in the afternoon. By bedtime, it was several inches deep and still coming down hard. When we got up the next morning, it had stopped snowing. You couldn't see out the back porch, for the snow was plastered all over the screen. When the screen door to the outside steps for the back porch was finally pried open, one looked out on a world buried in snow. Some people said it was three feet. I think twenty to twenty-four inches was more accurate. It was difficult to tell because the wind blew so hard and the snow drifted so badly. It totally covered up much of the fences. Of course, the roads were blocked. We didn't go to school for two weeks. The milking, feeding and watering of the cattle and chickens took all day. We had some wood stacked on the back porch for our heating and cooking. Until the wind stopped, it was useless to dig out a path, as it would soon drift full behind you. After the first day, it got extremely cold and set records that still hold until this day. It went below zero degrees Fahrenheit every morning for five days, with one reading of minus twelve degrees Fahrenheit in Richmond....

Samuel Dick Harris also describes the first tractor his father bought for farm work, the coming of electricity to his rural home, the installation of indoor plumbing, hog-killing time and other tough work on the farm, and the joys of running barefoot all through the summer. His account is all the more delightful to read because of the straightforward, no-nonsense style in which he writes.

We've had snow in dribs and drabs this winter, but "Dick's Book" was a good reminder that we've had nothing to compare with the winter of 1940 -- so far.

It was a good book to spend an afternoon with on a snowy day and think about our good fortune, even in the winter of 2014.

Paging Mr. DeMille

When a snowstorm keeps you inside and all you have to play with is a cat and a camera, interesting things happen -- although the cat doesn't necessarily think so.

Endless February

Only three of us and our instructor showed up for fitness class at the JCC this morning.

It was actually more relaxed and informal -- and great fun.

I came in from Northside Richmond, where there was a crust of frozen rain on top of about 4 inches of snow. When I woke up this morning at 8 a.m., I looked out of my 9th-floor window and the roads were a mess. But by 10 a.m., the plows had been at work and the roads were fairly clear.

So I decided to go to class.

It took a few minutes to clear the snow from my car windows. It was mostly fluffy and brushed off easily.

On the way to the JCC on Monument Avenue I had no problems, even on neighborhood streets. No sliding. No slipping. And very few other drivers on the road.

When I met up with the class, it was interesting to learn about snow around their homes. Amounts varied. Our Thursday instructor lives near the University of Richmond. The snow fell more heavily there, about 6 inches. In the far West End, the snow was even heavier, with one report saying 7 inches.

February has been tough in Richmond this year. Usually we might get one big snowfall per season -- and big by Richmond standards is as little as 4 to 6 inches. This February alone, Richmond has already had three of what the TV forecasters call "snow events."

It's getting old. And it's supposed to snow again tonight.

The late Times-Dispatch columnist Charles McDowell once wrote in his annual tirade about this cursed month: "February lacks the new hopefulness of January, the windy excitement of March, the sunny promise of April. February depresses. It litters the landscape with dirty, clinging snow. It sabotages the automobile battery. It brings man into bitter conflict with his furnace."

Charlie nailed it. February is the wicked witch of months. The shortest month is the cruelest. And it seems longer than the Mesozoic Era.

The best thing you can say about this February is that there are only 15 more days before we can rip it off of the calendar.

And by the time summer's hurricane season rolls around, we'll have forgotten all about it.